Northern Fancon Day 1: Alicia Witt and Kevin Sorbo

It was a dark and stormy night – no really, it might have been day, but it sure looked like night when I was getting ready to drive to Northern FanCon in Prince George, B.C. By the time I arrived on site, the crazy thunderstorms had cleared, and it was just drizzling lightly – however, all of the VIP and general admission guests were still huddled into the atrium, waiting for the gates to open.

It being the very beginning of 2017 Northern FanCon, I didn’t see very much cosplay, but this changed after I received my media pass and took a wander throughout the floor. This year’s con included professional cosplayers from around the area, including neighbouring Alberta and even some who drove over 15 hours to get here!

One of the vendors, JessBunny Makeup, also had a very realistic Link that I thought was a statue at first … very realistic!

As the evening wore on, I saw more and more excellent cosplays …

Northern FanCon is in it’s third year, and this is the first year that I wasn’t a volunteer – so it was extremely enjoyable to meander around and really take everything in. From steampunk jewelry to Walking Dead cakes, to wonderful metal creatures and fan-based makeup, this year’s con had something for everyone. I will definitely be taking a few things home for myself …

After noting which booths I wanted to return to, I made my way to the area where all the guests were signing autographs.

One of the guests I was most looking forward to was Alicia Witt. Alicia was brought to the con by Barkerville – if you’ve never been to Northern British Columbia, I highly recommend doing so just to visit Barkerville, B.C. Now a heritage site, Barkerville was “the” gold rush town in the 1850s, during the Cariboo Gold Rush. It has over 125 heritage buildings, displays, museums and shops, and is the “largest living-history museum in western North America.”

“ … It would be hard to beat the Walking Dead. It was just … it’s hard to even explain how profound an experience it was on every level. That’s aside from that so many millions of people watch it. Even if nobody had ever seen it would have still been an incredible experience for many reasons. Just a great complete story, it was almost like it was its own little story arc. The series of events that led to me being apart of it were so random and fortuitous I think it was just one of those meant to be things. I’m very grateful.”

Of course, I had to ask about Lily’s character in Supernatural, and what the experience was like, playing someone who only had one eye …

“That’s a really good question. Fortunately, as it turns out, I have one eye that is really good, and one eye that is not so good. I don’t wear contacts or anything, but luckily the eye that’s not so good is the one they wanted the patch on. It had already been pre-established, they didn’t ask which eye I wanted it on. So that was fortunate, it would have been really difficult for me to sword fight if the other eye had been covered. So that worked out fine. I’ve played a blind person on The Mentalist, so in that, we used contact lenses that filmed over the lenses of my eyes. I got very used to it; it wasn’t that difficult.”

Alicia will be doing a solo piano performance Saturday night as part of the con, and I’m very excited to review that.

Alicia left for photo ops, and I left to pick up my husband and grab some dinner. I returned just before seven for front-row seats at Kevin Sorbo’s panel.

Hercules still has it.

I remember watching Hercules growing up and enjoying the banter and the overall hilarity of the show. As Kevin mentions during the panel, they knew going in that people were going to make fun of the show – so they made fun of themselves, so the audience would be laughing with them, not at them.

Many, many of the funniest moments were ad lib. For instance, the doe, a deer, a female deer part was not on the page.

Kevin’s stories about Anthony Quinn (who played Zeus on Hercules) were absolutely hilarious – and very interesting to hear about some of the behind the scenes stories.

For instance, Anthony would often make changes to blocking, not because he was a jerk (as Kevin said), but because he had a better idea. In one barn scene, Josh Becker, the director of Hercules’s fifth movie, had a vision where Anthony’s character would move from place to place, as Hercules brought his horse in to the barn, and Zeus would appear for a chat.

“Yeah, I’m not going to do that,” said Anthony.

Instead, he wanted to appear on a bale of hay – piled two high, so he was elevated – and do the scene from there.

“I am the king of the Gods … I don’t move for anyone. I sit, and people come to me.”

And it worked. Beautifully.

From the funniest encounter with fans (signing for women at a con who were buck naked except for body paint) to his newest personal project, a show called “Let There be Light” – a Christmas movie, Kevin’s panel was a joy. I definitely hope to chat with him this weekend …

Day 2’s summary will include some coverage of the many artists at the con, and some chats with the people of the Creative Corner.

Below are some of the people dressed in their fav outfits. Northern FanCon continues through Sunday.